The young man gave a little start and shiver; the other’s bluntness had suddenly brought the whole position, and its future developments, home to him. It was the difference between theoretic and practical knowledge; his white face grew green-white, his hands became limp, and he laid the poker down. These two people sat in the superior’s country house on the outskirts of a big smoky town. Young Campion was asked there as a guest in order that his host might tell him he knew him to be a criminal. The boy—for he was little more than a boy—went there suffering qualms of conscience bred of gratitude. He knew his host had not quite the influence on his life that—let us say—Campion’s father would have wished to have, but he did not think of excusing his own behaviour on that account. He knew he had been, and was, doing wrong; it worried him, and he was ashamed of accepting the kindness which led his superior to ask him to stay with him from Saturday till Sunday evening. “My wife’s away, staying with her mother,” he said to Ralph Campion. “I’m alone. You’re looking out of sorts. You’d better come down to me this afternoon; besides, I’ve something to say to you quietly.”
So on Sunday afternoon when Campion was feeling particularly ashamed of himself and very unhappy and perplexed, he said, quietly, what he had to say, and thereby gave his unsuspecting guest a nervous shock which some people may think to be accountable for what followed. That is a matter of opinion, and “thought is free.” As aforesaid, there were reasons, serious reasons more important than the life, death, happiness, or pain of young Ralph Campion, why his ill-doing should not be found out till he was dead and incapable of speech.
It was a damp November day; the land was vivid brown and green—green fields, wet brown earth, brown stubble, brown rushes by a little bluish-brown canal, brown-green boughs with bright brown leaves clinging to them here and there. There had been much rain, the earth was sodden and reeking; there were black, purplish-grey clouds, shot with dull green in the East, and a pale silver-yellow sky in the West. It was early afternoon; the light was clear save where the smoke wreaths of the town brooded in the distance; there was no sunshine.
Ralph Campion looked at the brown-green earth; he did not see it. For the last few minutes his mind swung between two pictures; one of a little wind-swept churchyard where was the grave of an upright man whose name he bore; the other of a wee grey stone house very bleak and trim, standing on a shelterless hillside; therein lived his thin little, meek little old mother, dressed in a scanty black gown and a widow’s cap, reading her Bible at night and praying to God for her only son; she did not pray for her husband because he was dead, and she disliked Popery. At last Ralph Campion’s eyes filled with tears, and he felt it was time to go. Therefore he rose.
“Very well,” he said, “I don’t feel very grateful; but I should be so if you could hush it up when I have vanished, so that my—mother mightn’t know.”
“I shall hush it up if I can.” And no man knew better than he how sincerely he spoke the truth, and how earnestly he regretted it would be impossible to do so. There was no need to tell Ralph it was impossible. “Even if the young idiot were dead it wouldn’t be safe not to come out,” he thought. “But it would be much safer. If Carry and her father got to know what had led up to his playing the fool like this, and how far I’m responsible (though, of course, I’m not really responsible) there’d be the devil to pay.”
Carry was his wife, who was staying with her mother. Aloud he said:
“I’ve ordered the dog-cart for you. The thing to do will be to say good-bye cordially, you see. Then I shan’t know anything till this time to-morrow, when Mr. Warrener comes back.”
“If you don’t mind shaking hands,” said Ralph Campion, listlessly, “of course I don’t.”
So they shook hands, and the host shouted cheerful and jocular good-speed after the parting guest. Campion left the cart half way to the station; he told the groom to drive on and leave his portmanteau in the cloak-room to be called for. He struck straight across the sodden fields, and walked townwards. It was ten miles to the town; his boots were clogged with dank clay when he reached the first houses on the outskirts. They were hideous little brick boxes in an unmade road leading nowhere.